bullymeena wrote:what about pig ears? I give my pup pig ears and she loves them but they seem to give her the runs.

Pig ears are smoked to preserve them. So they are 'cooked'. They only last about 10 minutes in my house though, so I don't bother buying them anymore.

*brag alert*!!!!

I just bought a 1/4 cow and got about 30 pounds of fresh raw bones for the dogs. Forget watching them in the yard, I could have put them in the middle of an open field and neither of them would have moved one inch from their bone!

I personally wouldn't give pig ears. They are very fatty, and the runs are a common side effect. I can't stand the smell of them, worse that cow hooves to me and God knows cow hooves are BADDDDD!. I quit giving them when my female boxer choked on a chunk. Your luck Michelle, ten minutes??? Jeeez, I was lucky to get 5.

It's up to you, I don't think they do any real harm, but if the dog gets the runs then find something else. Soupy poopie does not indicate that the dog is getting along with what you are giving her to eat.

Cow hooves smell aweful, but why are they 'bad'? Not that I need to give them hooves anymore, I have to empty out 30 pounds of bones from my freezer (anyone want some????)

yes, too much bone bungs them up. I feed BARF, so I watch my dogs' poop, if it's getting a bit hard for them to pass, I add more meat, or a bit of fat or oil to their diet. If it's too soft, I up the bone or the veggies. I've been doing this for almost a year now, so I've got a basic formula down and their poops are pretty good for the most part:)

which reminds me, I read somewhere in another thread that light-colored poop means your dog isn't absorbing the nutrients, bad food, etc.? As a BARFer, my dogs poop is almost completely white when it comes out, and it soon dries to totally white and crumbles into dust. Yet their diet is really good, all they eat are bones, meat, veggies, a bit of offal here and there, and a few supplements. Is there any truth to this light poop business?

"... read somewhere in another thread that light-colored poop means your dog isn't absorbing the nutrients, bad food, etc.? As a BARFer, my dogs poop is almost completely white when it comes out, and it soon dries to totally white and crumbles into dust. Yet their diet is really good, all they eat are bones, meat, veggies, a bit of offal here and there, and a few supplements. Is there any truth to this light poop business?"

Hard and very dry, light brown feces that turn white when dried up means that there is ground up bone in it, however if fat is not being digested propely the feces will be also a light brown [but more soft] and might mean that they have a problem with thier digestive enzymes such as amalase and lipase .[ whitch are excreated from the pancrese ]or bile which is made in the the liver and reaches the intestines via the bile duct. So in that case there is either too much fat for the enzymes to digest or that there is a problem with one of the organs listed above.

Light brown or orange stools are also an indication of a low quality high grain diet. My dogs can also be white........they get lots of bone, that's completely different. I haven't started Garion on much raw yet, a little meat here and there and I'm just now introducing bone. His stools are almost black with the diet I'm feeding him, that will change when he starts getting more bone.